


Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, I don't wanna tackle that question, I would say 'Angst With a Happy Ending' but does anything pre-series truly have a happy ending?, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 10:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5159783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is proximity to power. Or, five times Will and Mac almost meet in Washington, DC and the first time they finally do in New York City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This is just some pre-series nonsense through which I work some of my more ridiculous headcanons about Will and Mac's lives pre-series. I know there's some contention about whether Will and Mac worked at CNN in DC or New York, since Sorkin apparently changed his mind sometime between the pilot and "Bullies." I generally go with New York, since that seems to be what Sorkin landed on and because I'm far more familiar with Manhattan than DC. Also because of the Sara Bareilles song "Manhattan" having been on too many of my Will/Mac writing playlists. But we won't go into that... 
> 
> There are approximately six "Hamilton" references in this fic. Also, a few from "The West Wing." 
> 
> Thanks to Meg and Pippa!

**One.**

She’s fifteen, and fearless _—_ that’s a lie, of course. She’s a few weeks shy of fifteen, and trembling with uncertainty.

MacKenzie has been in Washington for almost a year now, in the custody of her American godparents while her father is in Afghanistan and her mother is in London, with her younger sisters, her brother attending his first year at Cambridge.

Fifteen, afraid, and almost alone in the country of her birth.

This is what happens, she knows. Your father becomes the British Ambassador to Afghanistan, and is stationed in Kabul. He becomes caught up in a firefight between the mujahedeen and the withdrawing Soviet forces, and either in the possession of guerilla militants or a village mullah or a disgruntled Russian officer. He is ally to none, and political enemy of both. But this is the risk, when your father is in the foreign service of his queen and country.

She is pulled from her lonely and confused post at the chapel at the Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, clumsy fingers working over the beads of a borrowed rosary. Molly squeezes her hand one last time, and then lets go.

A summons from the White House.

He is twenty-eight and in the room where it happens. The British delegation puts her in the back of the Roosevelt Room, on the fringe. She is dressed appropriately, the only thing marking her as an outsider is her age, the way she nervously twists her dark hair around her index finger.

“Can we expect Thatcher is going to retaliate?”

Will scratches notes into the margins of his security briefing memos. The dark haired teenager becomes less interesting as the meeting proceeds; she doesn’t look at him even once, except a cursory sweep of the room’s inhabitants.

They leave through separate doors, never meeting.

 

 

**Two.**

“Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I present his Excellency, Sir Edward McHale of Great Britain and by request of the Secretary of State ask that you accept his credentials from her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, as Great Britain’s Ambassador to the United States.”

Two years have passed, and her family as a whole is at last together again in America. Only ever whole and together in America.

So of course MacKenzie is leaving for Cambridge in two months.

Fighting against the urge to fidget with the uncomfortable seam at the waist of her dress, she looks on at her father with pride. A UN commendation, a knighthood, and a promotion all in one year.

“Where are you on the missile shield?” Bush asks, surveying the blue folder bearing her father’s papers.

Suddenly the seam irritating her back is a lot less interesting. Lifting a scant eyebrow, Mac looks from her father, to the president, and back. She knows what he is about to say, after all — he said it last night at the dinner table, raving at some imbecile news report on the newest installment of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Her father inclines his head, clasping his hands behind his back. “Well, I think it's dangerous, illegal... fiscally irresponsible, technologically unsound, and a threat to all people everywhere.”

Inexplicably, Bush smiles. Then turns to one of his advisers. “Will?

He is thirty, and still hanging onto the room where it happens. Clawing outside of his own skin and into something else, shredding himself to fractions and impartiality to remain relevant. Stay, stay, stay far from the weary floorboards of a Nebraska farmhouse.

Stay relevant, stay in DC, keep his father out of his head.

“I think the world invented a nuclear weapon. I think the world owes it to itself to see if it can't invent something that would make it irrelevant,” he counters, a veneer of smugness covering up a deep yawning chasm of uncertainty.

MacKenzie rocks back on her heels.

It’s the right sentiment.

But does he really think he can make it stop?

Her father looks tired. “We build a shield, and someone will build a better missile.”

Next to her Ainsley picks at her nails, leaning hazardously into Bridget. Removing her gaze from the young blonde man, Mac elbows her younger sister to attention. _We are in the Oval Office_ , she glares. _Watch yourself,_ her eyes say.

People do not come back whole; they must fill back in what has been taken from them with something new.

“I accept your letter of credence from Queen Elizabeth, and, by affixing my signature and seal, do hereby declare you to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.”

They smile and pose with the President for the official portrait. It will be in the papers back in England tomorrow, buried deep among the international news.

Will moves out of frame.

 

 

**Three.**

The young woman in the tight black dress moves effortlessly through the crowded room. Will finishes the glass of champagne in front of him; his third in the past hour. The President has given his speech; Will’s finger tips are stained with red ink from last minute revisions to the address to the Chinese President and his wife.

It’s gone better than last month’s state dinner in Japan, at least.

No one vomited, or passed out.

The night is young, however. Will considers a fourth glass of champagne borne on the silver platter of a livery-wearing waiter. He’s sure other guests have surpassed that much already; his mind might as well join the other alcohol-drenched consciences in the East Room.

The woman in the tight black dress passes by his table.

He thinks he remembers her from somewhere. Her features are slim and distinct, but Will can’t place where he’s seen her before. If he knows her at all, really. There are many beautiful women at these sorts of things. The Senator from California has brought (has _bought,_ truly) an escort.

And he would know. The sex workers of Washington may be of a slightly different mold than Greenpoint, but he knows how the arrangement works. It’s just that now he’s paid a better salary than he was in Brooklyn, and paid to ignore these finer slippery details of law.

(Deciding on a fourth glass, he swallows down the crime scene photographs of dark dingy basements, chains on the floors and walls, blankets on the floor where trafficked women were kept drugged and docile, primed for exploitation.

He fought, because he didn’t know how to _stop._

To be honest, he still doesn’t. And he doesn’t know why he is, anymore, or what for.)

His gaze is drawn back to the woman in black, speaking to the British Ambassador a few feet from him. She might be the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in real life. So, naturally, he mires in his own insecurities and watches as someone else asks her to dance.

 

 

**Four.**

ABC crew goes to Kabul to cover the Afghan civil war. ABC crew gets in over their heads. ABC crew is forced to hide in a Doctors Without Borders aid station for two weeks as the Taliban takes over the capital. ABC crew comes home, and is summoned to the Hill to testify in front of a committee made up from members of both the House and the Senate about the state of Afghanistan.

The Majority Counsel’s Office has asked him here.

To what end, Will has no fucking clue.

“In 1980, the US and Great Britain gave Pakistan nearly twenty billion dollars to train the Taliban,” the field producer testifying says. “We provided them with arms and ammunition to fight against Soviet-backed Mohammed Najibullah. We ceded control of the aftermath to Pakistan — who wanted to clear the way for hegemony in Central Asia. The Peshawar Accords were doomed to fail from the start. We expected the new Islamic government of Afghanistan to relinquish their nationalist objectives in order for our allies in Pakistan to realize their regional ambitions. Now half of Kabul has been destroyed by rocket launchers and mortar fire.”

Middle East strategy has always been remarkably out of his depth.

The woman speaking — MacKenzie McHale, twenty-three and some green journalist sent into a warzone because… of her name, he guesses — has a posh British accent for someone who is apparently a US citizen, according to the dossier the Speaker’s office has given him.

“But what did you observe _while you were there,_ Ms. McHale?” Congressman Chabot, now clearly irritated asks.

Will’s eyes flicker back to MacKenzie McHale, noticing for the first time a dusky bruise on the right side of her jaw.

Her answer, he knows, is going to be a soundbite on the evening news. “Do you want the whole story, Congressman, or just the part that will get the Defense subcommittee more funding for artillery made in your home state of Ohio?”

Briefly he considers introducing himself after the hearing concludes, but he doubts that MacKenzie wants to speak to a Republican right now.

 

 

**Five.**

The envelope appears in the interior pocket of her pea coat after she slipped away from the bar at Off the Record to use the bathroom. Written over the seal is in what she thinks is a man’s untidy script: _On the record, for the record. Use wisely._

Excusing herself from her date with a fabricated upset stomach, she escapes the basement bar packed with Senators and White House staffers and hails herself a cab. Watching carefully, he follows her out, ten steps behind. Eager, maybe, to see how she reacts to what he’s given her. It’s not the same caliber as Afghanistan falling into the hands of the Taliban, but Will figures that a twenty-four year old producer takes her breaks where she can get them. For a moment, she looks back. But he’s safely hidden in the shadows, and so she slips into the car.

Safely ensconced inside the dark taxi, she opens the envelope, pulling out its contents for examination.

A list of Republican congressional representatives on the prosecution in the Clinton impeachment hearings who have had extramarital affairs. Neatly typed on nondescript copy paper, with dates and names and in a few instances — pictures and correspondence. People willing to go on the record to talk.

All Mac can figure is that her source is someone inside the RNC.

There’s no way a Democrat would be anonymously passing this off to an ABC field producer based in the back row of the White House press room or the steps of the Hill.

It’s an inside man.  

For weeks she considers chasing his identity, but all the information he gives her turns out to be true. When a press release announcing Will McAvoy’s resignation from the RNC crosses the wires at the height of the Clinton Impeachment crosses her desk she stops, and wonders.

But that’s all that she does about it.

Wonder.

 

 

**One.**

Since Brian moved out without forewarning or any sort of ceremony more than literally _throwing_ his key to their rent-controlled apartment at her and warning her to take his name off the lease four months ago, she’s been alone in a tiny studio she could barely afford on a field producer’s salary. But then there was an opening for the senior producer position at ten o’clock, so she took it. Not without hesitating — being the field was what gave her the opportunity for her Peabody, which eventually led to Brian dumping her, but goddamn a _Peabody_ at thirty — but she took it.

She’s thirty, and fearless, but mostly she’s working on getting drunk.

Will McAvoy is a name. One she’s heard a few times over the past fifteen years, but a name nevertheless, with the vague inclination of a face and a haircut and the reputation he earned from spending a herculean twenty hours in the chair at ACN on 9/11.

He sees her alone at the bar of choice for CNN staffers at the end of her first week back in the studio, and orders her another drink. Then proffers his hand, and his name.

For some reason, she giggles, a thrill going through her at the feel of the callouses on his fingertips against her palm as she lets go of his hand. “I know who you are.”

Accepting the three fingers of Jameson from the bartender, she sips from the glass with more care than with her first two. He’s more handsome, she thinks, without the pancake makeup and perfectly combed hair and out of the suit. Insufferably smug and sure of himself, but handsome. And ready to buy her liquor, which is what counts at the moment.

“MacKenzie,” she says, as an afterthought.

His fingers twitch at his sides, so he shoves them into the pockets of his leather jacket — her bangs have fallen into her face, obscuring her wide shining eyes. _Don’t be a fucking creep_ , he chides himself. It’s taken him the whole week to pluck up the goddamn nerve to just _talk_ to her.

 _Amazing,_ he thinks. _Only thirty, and fearless, and amazing._ He’s wearing a smile that is more of a smirk than he intends it to be.

“I know who you are,” he repeats back to her.  

She looks at him with a sheen of disbelief painting her features, and then laughs. “Okay.”

Her laugh catches, and she snorts, and he thinks it’s magnificent. Taking his own drink from the bartender, he holds the rim of the tumbler to his lips, still watching her.

“Okay.”

_Okay._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
